Shaws Slalom - 6 March 2011

Sunday saw one of the first slalom competition since the redevelopment of the Shaws Bridge site. I entered in C1 and C2 with Niall Cockbill from WWKC.

The course set up had a few tricky gates set-up, with one of the most annoying ones, gate 5, at the first weir not quite in the eddy or the flow, and very close to the weir itself.

In my first run in the c1 I attacked this gate a bit too hard and caught an edge causing me to capsize. As I rolled back up my strap popped, which meant I wasn't able to commit to any of the turns on the rest of the course as I wanted to. I got back up and through the gate and finished the run in a respectable enough time clipping only 1 gate at the end.

Next up was my first c2 run with Niall. For once I was able to paddle on my strong side at the front, and we put in a decent time hitting 3 gates. We probably lost time due to my natural tendency to do cross bow strokes.

After the break it was time for second runs. Since I already had a decent time time in c1 (beating some actual slalom paddlers) I went all out to do the fastest run I could manage. I was dipping under the gates and hitting them all very high, and everything was going well until I was surfing back across the third weir. My srap popped again, causing me to capsize, and since I was in the stopper I was pulled straight out of the boat. Not to worry, there was a local news crew there to record the whole thing. Good to know my swims are news worthy.

When it came to the second run in the c2, I was concentrating on not doing cross bow strokes, and it worked really well. Myself and Niall really worked well together and we got a very good line through all the gates hitting just one. We were dipping the boat comfortably which was unexpected due to the heavier paddler being in the front.

We finished 4th out of 7 crews, which I was very happy with especially considering I was the only non slalom paddler in c2.

I still managed 7th (out of 9) in C1 despite only 1 run which had a roll in it. Next time I will outfit the boat myself and try and get even closer to the full time slalom paddlers.

Thanks to Navarat Turner for the photos.